Seminars and Journal Clubs

MURAVES : Imaging Mt. Vesuvius with cosmic ray muons

by Samip Basnet (UCL - CP3)

Europe/Brussels
Description

Muon Tomography (or "muography") is an imaging technique based on 
absorption or scattering of cosmic ray muons. For studying the interior 
of large scale man-made or natural structures such as pyramids, 
volcanoes, little hills etc, high penetration capability of muons is 
exploited and imaging is performed using the measurement of the 
absorption profiles of muons as they pass through the target of 
interest. In this context, the MUon RAdiography of VESuvius (MURAVES) 
experiment aims to study the summital cone of Mt. Vesuvius, an active 
volcano near Naples, Italy. The information of the density distribution 
obtained using muography, in combination with other geophysical 
measurements will be used for better defining the volcanic plug at the 
bottom of the crater, which could help shed some light on possible 
future activities of the volcano.

In this talk, I will provide an overview of the motivations as well as 
goals of the MURAVES experiment. The detector and the experimental 
set-up will also be described in detail. Furthermore, I will present 
some very preliminary results and also discuss current and future 
MURAVES works that the CP3 muography team is involved in.